It was a ratty dictionary that sat in a scared girls hands. The illusions of her adulthood stripped away as she stared into the maw of...fuck...five minutes from now. It was one thing staying one step ahead of her dad...it was another thing entirely to try and find a sliver of peace in this fucking War she didn't want to have any part in...blinking away yesterday took longer then it should have. Scrubbing her face with the back of her hand she stared at the tattered book in her hands.

Nouns swam, twisting themselves in her mind.

Cruelty. /ˈkro͞o(ə)ltē / Noun: 1) Callous indifference to or pleasure in causing pain and suffering. 2) behavior that causes pain or suffering to a person or animal.

This stupid fucking noun permeated every drop of her heredity.

Her father, a monster hidden behind a shield.

Her mother always whispering promises of freedom, but who stole her life away before they could face the harsh, biting reality of what 'freedom' entailed.

Freedom. /ˈfrēdəm / Noun: 1) the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. 2) absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government. 3) the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.

Lies. Stupid fucking lies.

Freedom meant frostbitten lips, it meant unending, gnawing, twisting hunger. It meant always looking over your shoulder. It meant being to fucking scared to go to the hospital even though you knew you were dying. Time only had what meaning she gave it, and Fate was hers to twist...but...that didn't mean shit in the face of knowing that you were watching your friend take their last stuttering breaths. She didn't know Life or Death or-or...

Witchcraft /ˈwiCHˌkraft / Noun: the practice of magic, especially black magic; the use of spells and the invocation of spirits.

Well then.

With tears blurring her vision, dripping down and staining the ratty pages, three separate nouns twisting her thoughts, she made a choice.


The dawn's light struggled to filter through the dense cloud cover, and the blinds someone had pulled down sometime between last night and whenever Banshee pulled her ass out of bed.

Pulling a bowl from the sink, she swished some water around and called it good enough. Milk was grabbed, but it's best before said it was past due, but when you could (sorta) twist Time to your whim, the best before was relative. Lucky Charms were spilled in the still wet bowl and the iffy milk was splashed on next. With breakfast in hand, she settled into a char at the table.

Shadows began lengthening, her heart started a frantic rhythm. The sugary cereal in her bowl began smelling of rot. Putrefied offal, sat in black blood. The marshmallow wriggled until their form showed maggots.

Banshee spoons the writhing mass into her mouth.

The pestilent worms fat off the death they feed from feel slick in her mouth as they writhe away from tongue and teeth.

With a quick decisive movement Banshee crunches the mass into teeny tiny bites. Then swallows as she spoons more to her mouth. "Still tastes like sugar." Is her only comment before the second spoonful is being crunched into bits.

"Pakshet" Aswang cursed. Certain that this time he'd perfected the spell.

"Better luck next time...Sugar." came a mock engagement, with an equally false southern twang.

Aswang growled and before he could retort, Oona silenced them with a quick flair of her power.

The two rivals turned towards their master, who in turn introduced them to a small sylph of a girl.

The rivals grinned at her, daunting and feral.

And that was how the girl who once was Willow and could have been Tuesday was introduced to her pylon.